College Baseball Foundation receives $5 million grant from Moody Foundation

College Baseball Hall of Fame executive director Mike Gustafson lauded the audacity of the Lubbock-based College Baseball Foundation and the Lubbock community as the major reason the Hall was begun in the city.

On Tuesday, that audacity, and the CBF’s tenacity, were rewarded with a major contribution toward construction of the Hall of Fame museum. The Moody Foundation of Galveston awarded the Hall of Fame a grant of $5 million toward construction of the museum, which could lead to a groundbreaking as early as this summer.

“Hopefully it’s the first big domino that starts the thing tumbling,” Gustafson said. “Both financially and from a credibility standpoint, there’s no question about that. It’s a shot in the arm. To people who are involved in this project, it’s a boost of confidence. This is very much now a reality and ... it gives us a lot of confidence moving forward.”

The Hall of Fame has inducted seven classes beginning in 2006 but has not had a museum to house all its artifacts and Hall member memorabilia. The CBF targeted a museum capital campaign of $13 million with $9.25 million required to be raised before beginning construction, and a $4 million endowment to be established for operating costs once the museum is open.

The gift from the Moody Foundation brings the construction fundraising to $7 million. Hall of Fame vice president of development Jana Howser said she’s confident that the Moody Foundation making such a large grant to the organization will quickly open doors for donations from other organizations quickly reach the $9.25 million mark.

“Enough to get it done,” Howser said. “The people that we’re involved with have the capacity to get this finished and that is what we will set forth to do in the near (future.)

“A $5 million gift, to grant that size of an amount in the scope of the total cost of construction of the project, is extraordinary. I don’t know any other words to say. I believe, in every way I can conceptualize, what this gift means in terms of every part of what we do and will do, it’s as good as I can fathom.”

The site for the Hall of Fame museum is a five-acre plot of land donated by the City of Lubbock northwest of the Lubbock Memorial Civic Center between the Marsha Sharp Freeway and Mac Davis Lane and between Avenues L and O.

“Some of the sources (of fundraising) hadn’t really been available to us yet, until we’d gotten a gift like this,” Gustafson said. “It not only gets us over halfway in the campaign but it’s also the credibility of the Moody Foundation and what those guys represent. Now, we’ve been vetted and we’ve been vetted by somebody that brings a ton of credibility.”

The Moody Foundation, which has several ties to Lubbock in terms of projects such as the Moody Planetarium on the Texas Tech campus and the Overton Hotel, was established in 1942 by the William Lewis Moody, Jr., family in Galveston. With assets totalling more than $1.8 billion, the Moody Foundation awarded more than $49 million in grants in 2012 alone.

Allan Matthews, Moody Foundation Scholarship Programs Director and Grants Officer for Central Texas, said the family’s and foundation’s previous ties to Lubbock made awarding the grant to the College Baseball Hall of Fame an easy one.

“I’ve always had a life-long love with baseball myself, and to be able to work through the foundation and become involved in this project is special to me,” said Matthews, who played baseball at Rice during the mid-1980s.

“I think it’s a bold move. It makes sense from an economic development standpoint and for general support of the City of Lubbock.”

Gustafson said the CBF Board of Directors will convene within the next few days to weeks to begin the next steps. Initial renderings of the Hall of Fame museum have already been made, but more fundraising is necessary.

The land donated for the museum by the city was contingent on ground being broken for the museum by 2015. Gustafson is optimistic that ground could be broken or be very close to being broken by the time the CBF hosts is annual Night of Champions and 2013 Hall of Fame induction this summer.

“We’ll convene our board, convene our building committees in the next month or so and really start working toward that,” Gustafson said. “I’d really be shocked if we don’t (break ground before 2015). In the past we’ve had belief in ourselves and our sponsors and the City of Lubbock. Now, with this behind us, it changes everything.”